Monthly Archive for February, 2015

Megan Rice 88101-020 MDC Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center P.O. Box 329002 Brooklyn, NY 11232 February, 2015 Dear Sisters and Brothers in solidarity with our shared movement towards transforming our world into a nuclear-free world worthy of being passed on to the “seventh generation”, 2015 has begun with a plethora of gifts of the wisdom so […]

On Sunday, February 22, three Trident Ploughshares activists were arrested at Faslane naval base after attempting to paint peace slogans on the perimeter fence. One person was charged with vandalism while the other two were detained after pinning a set of “Peace Pirate Articles” to the fence.

Jean Oliver, from Biggar, Janet Fenton from Edinburgh and David Mackenzie from Largs are known as the Peaton Peace Pirates (the “PPP”), and are careful to distinguish themselves from the sectarian splinter group known as the Peace Pirates From Peaton (the “PPFP”).

On the afternoon of February 18, six people – including several clergy members and military veterans – were arrested during an Ash Wednesday service at the gate of Beale Air Force Base during an act of “repentance” for the innocent people killed by the U.S. government’s fleet of killer drones.

Participants spread ashes memorializing those of children killed by U.S. drones overseas. The four women and two men who crossed the line also carried an indictment with them onto the base (see indictment below). They were charged with trespassing onto federal land and taken into custody by military police.

After a week here in FMC Lexington Satellite camp, a federal prison in Kentucky, I started catching up on national and international news via back issues of USA Today available in the prison library, and an “In Brief” item, on p. 2A of the Jan. 30 weekend edition, caught my eye. It briefly described a protest in Washington, D.C., in which members of the antiwar group “Code Pink” interrupted a U.S. Senate Armed Services budget hearing chaired by Senator John McCain. The protesters approached a witness table where Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright and George Schulz were seated. One of their signs called Henry Kissinger a war criminal. “McCain,” the article continued, “blurted out, ‘Get out of here, you low-life scum.'”

I know that many of you have concerns about the status of my situation and have been wanting an update about what is going on. A lot has been happening in the last few months and I am sorry I have not written in a while. The deaths over this last year have been hard to accept, including the recent loss of my Sister Vivian. I want to deeply thank everyone for your loving words, prayers and also for helping my son Chauncey pay for her funeral expenses, I am humbled beyond what my words can express.

Photo by Buddy Bell, taken of Kathy Kelly on January 23, shortly before she began her 3 month prison sentence

The Shift

reprint of a letter from Kathy Kelly

“We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person oriented society: when machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” – Martin Luther King Jr., “Beyond Vietnam”

But of the four federal prisons I’ve lived in, this particular “unit” may be the most conducive to mental health. Generally, the Bureau of Prisons system pushes guards to value buffed floors more than the people buffing the floors, walking the floors. Here, the atmosphere seems less uptight, albeit tinged with resigned acceptance that everyone is more or less “stuck” in what one prisoner described as “the armpit of the system.”